ABSTRACT: The specific features of various ports create difficulties for county port authorities in Zadar County and other coastal regions of Croatia in effectively performing daily tasks like managing, maintaining, constructing, and operating ports. The reason for this is the increased presence of various elements that directly affect decision-making regarding the port's progress. Therefore, it has been acknowledged that it is necessary to establish a methodology that allows decision-makers (county port authorities) to make objective decisions regarding the future direction of port development. This article presents a methodology proposal based on the AHP (Analytical Hierarchy Process) method of multi-criteria decision-making. When determining the methodology, special attention was paid to the decision-makers, who were found to possess specific professional knowledge in their activity but rarely possess prior expertise in multi-criteria decision-making. Hence, it was crucial to establish a methodology that would be both straightforward and suitable for adoption by decision-makers themselves. The AHP method, aided by a wide range of easily accessible and even cost-free tools, facilitates this through its visual representation of goals, criteria, sub-criteria, interconnections, and subsequent outcomes. This approach ensures the feasibility of ongoing monitoring throughout the decision-making process. Ultimately, the proposed methodology was verified on the examples of five port areas based on conducted empirical research, which, with their properties, satisfy different directions of development. At the same time, the obtained results confirm its applicability.

KEYWORDS: Port Development, Port Operations, Energy Efficiency, Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Sustainability, Infrastructure Development, Transport Systems

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